• Once there was a plan to get the Tories back into government without those nasty Lib Dems. It was a clear plan, arrived at after much research. The man responsible, Lord Ashcroft, strategist and Tory moneybags, was very proud of it. You need to pick up more minority votes, he said. "The party must understand the anxieties and aspirations of people from these backgrounds – and that many do not believe Tory principles extend to the concern for others that are an essential part of their own religious and cultural identity," he said in the Sunday Telegraph. "Otherwise, it will continue to be seen as a party of middle-class white people which talks only to other middle-class white people." Some, looking at the stats, took this to heart, especially the modernisers in central office. So that was broadly the plan, more minorities, more women, more attention to the north. So where are we after yesterday's reshuffle? Down goes Baroness Warsi, demoted and reasonably so perhaps – but deposed as the figurehead of the Ashcroft approach and not replaced. Up goes Jeremy Hunt, the white male MP for South West Surrey, and Chris Grayling, the white male member for Epsom and Ewell; and up, up goes Grant Shapps, the white male MP for Welwyn Hatfield. Welcome back David Laws, the Tory's favourite Lib Dem, and honourable white male member for Yeovil. Once there was a plan. Now there is another plan that means no ethnic minority member of the cabinet. Poor Lord Ashcroft; and that isn't a sentence that trips off the tongue. What a waste of time and money.

• Some women did benefit. Theresa May stayed put at the Home Office, and Justine Greening, having made clear her opposition to Heathrow expansion, will be jetting out from there every other week as international development secretary. And what about Maria Miller, Jeremy Hunt's replacement as culture secretary, responsible for the media? Just last year, we spent thousands giving her and the other rookie ministers basic media training to stop them messing up on the telly. A fast learner? We'll see.

• The fact that education secretary Michael Gove held on to his job ensures that the PM will not have another restless and potentially dangerous soul to deal with on the backbenches. It also allows the favourite of the Tory right to push on with his free schools revolution; perhaps resuscitating some of the proposals that foundered in the first wave. By far the most imaginative of these must have been the school that would have opened in Rotherham under the supervision of a Tory-inclined teacher and one half of the northern comic duo, the Chuckle Brothers. The initiative foundered because the driving force backed out citing personal circumstances. Which was a shame for Gove, because he was behind the venture. "The fact someone who is strong in the variety world wanted to back it is, to my mind, only proof that increasingly when people look at this government, from whatever background they come, they have a smile on their face as they consider our achievements," he said. The person most likely to smile in this context is surely Ed Miliband.

• Ordinarily Grahame Morris, the Labour MP for Easington in the north-east, would smile too. But not today. He has, what one might call "a situation". It can't be easy, as the principled leader of Labour Left, to contend with Twitter trolls denouncing him as a misogynist and a "redneck". All because of his namesake Grahame Morris, a strategist with the Australian Labor party. Our Grahame Morris embodies the long tradition of working class political struggle. Their Grahame Morris called a female journalist a "cow" and suggested opponents of Australian prime minister Julia Gillard really "ought to be kicking her to death". Our Grahame might well struggle in Oz. They certainly wouldn't stand for the Aussie Grahame in Easington.

• Finally, he survived the reshuffle, but it's tough being chancellor of the exchequer these days. Why, colleagues are asking, did 80,000 people boo George Osborne on his visit to the Paralympics this week? Because that's the capacity of the stadium.